Interesting facts

The word orange evolved from the South-Asian Dravidian naram via the Sanskrit naranga, Farsi nareng = favoured by elephants, Arabic naranj to the Spanish naranja and Old French auranja. In turn, the colour orange was named after the fruit. The scientific epithet aurantium is derived from Latin aurum = gold and refers to the colour of the fruit. The term marmalade which is used to designate a preserve made of bitter orange derives from the Portuguese marmalada = a preserve made from quince (marmelo).
According to legend, neroli oil was named after the Sicilian princess Nerola. This princess is supposed to have lived in the Italian town of Nerola during the Renaissance in the 17th century and loved the scent of neroli so much that she even had the leather of her gloves perfumed with it.
The bitter orange was bred by crossing mandarin (Citrus reticulate) and grapefruit (Citrus maxima). The Arabs brought the plant to the West along the Silk Road and there were already bitter orange groves on Sicily in 1002. The further north the bitter orange trees travelled, the more problematic the climate became for these frost-sensitive plants. In consequence, Baroque princes built orangeries – large greenhouses for different kinds of citrus fruits – in which the bitter orange, too, was cultivated. After the introduction of the sweet orange the bitter orange lost some of its appeal and was often used merely as a robust stock for other citrus fruits, i.e. as a strong stem on to which the branches of other citrus types were grafted.
The famous “James Keiller & Son Dundee Orange Marmalade” came about towards the end of the 18th century, and was more or less born of necessity. A Spanish trading ship from Seville was forced to anchor in Dundee in Scotland when a threatening storm prevented it from continuing its journey. This ship was carrying bitter oranges which were no longer quite fresh, so the crew sold them cheaply. The buyer, John Keiller, gave them to his wife Janet (1735-1813), who cut them into small pieces and boiled them with a large quantity of sugar because the raw fruit was inedible. The result was the first orange marmalade, which Janet Keiller sold so successfully in her confectionary shop that in 1797 the Keillers established the world’s first marmalade manufactory in Dundee. They named it after their son, James Keiller. That the bitter orange marmalade is so popular in the British Isles may well be because it stimulates the digestive system and makes the hearty traditional English breakfast of bacon and eggs more digestible.